Good political writing should calm readers rather than shock them

Evidence

Calm is not a replacement for righteous rage or fury at injustice, both of which are powerful drivers for necessary change. But calm is the precondition for focus, for the capacity to prioritize. If shock induced a loss of identity, then calm is the condition under which we return to ourselves. … The information is almost always distressing and, to many, shocking—but in my view, the goal should never be to put readers into a state of shock. It should be to pull them out of it. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 748

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Writers must administer linguistic shocks to overcome readers’ numbed sense of the concrete — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 63